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Signal finds all the mainstaysof the raster-noton label/collective; Olaf Bender, Frank Bretschneider & Casten Nicolai,working together to form an Abstract/ minimalist electronic supergroup. Robotro their second album finds them offering up some of their most rewarding, consistent and atmospheric work- to come from either of the three or the label as a whole.
Syk Asfalt takes the listener into a strange wet and grey world, where slowly decaying buildings appear out of rancid fog, black spores trails and growths creep over ever surface and the stagnant air is always heavy with dark threat. And it just carries on rain and raining with in this world, imagine if Bela Tarr decided to do a grim horror film this is the audio equivalent of it.
The Garden of Forking Paths is this Austrian jazz pianist first album offering up 8 slices of edgy and complex jazz improvising with help from fellow jazz improvisers like the excellent trumpeter Scott Tinker, ken Edie on drums and Philip Rex on double bass .
North Star Deserter is a lyrically sharpe and clever collection of memorable singer/songwriter songs, that go from folky to country strum to rocking bass led & string lined to the more experimental edges, but never moving too far away from there song base.
Wolf's Milk finds Mr Menche dipping into prime eerier, gothic and hypotonic drone waters. With three long & untitled tracks each sourced from a different sound source- with very little of a noise attack, this concentrates on smothering and grim atmospherics.
This is Murcof third album and it finds this electronica cinematic painter’s composing with recordings of classical instruments, Which in theory is an interesting idea that should deepen and make his work more epic, but sadly in reality it feels rather hit and miss affair.
"Astilbe Rubra plays as a collection of ideas/directions I plan to study and explore. Ultimately I wish to share with listeners my methodology and contributions to the field of sound design and composition", says Nicholas on the infosheet.
The central theme of "I am the Resurrection and the Light", the songcycle that makes up a large part of The Blind Spot is drugaddiction and loss, and it's a eulogy for friends of Redfearn who lost their lives battling an addiction. Accordingly, the music mostly is melancholic, if not depressed.
This untitled album brings together three often sinister and edgy, but always hypnotic improvised drone/tone shifting pieces by Ellen Fullman; playing his own constructed long string instrument and Sean Meehan playing snare drum with cymbals.
Plants and Hearts is 21 minute ep that easers the listener into calming almost weightless waters of ambient guitar drone audio soothing.
It's a small world after all, we find here a project with Swedish singer/songwriter Sara Lunden joining forces Ukranian electronic artist Andrey Kiritchenko for a 25 minute EP.
On For, their fourth (wink, wink) album, every song is a dedication. For musicians, graphic artists and/or personal friends. How exactly this influences the music of course not always clear, but it doesn't really matter.
Videniya (The Visions) takes you soaring over vast forests, down deep dark green valleys and falling through nature engulfed ruins , It feels like the soundtrack to when nature has taking it’s planet back and few humans roam the landscape, where animals graze undisturbed and natural spirits roam the woodland glades and the tallest evergreens.
Still Alive joins the long line of instrumental hip-hop/ experimental records on Anticon label(seems they do little else these days) which have gone from superb to rather lacklustre, thankful Still Alive is one of the aces in the pack, aptly mixing in jazzy textures and rock/indie influences to the crunching distinctive dusty Anticon beat sound.
All the work I had heard before by finish artist cloama fitted fairly squarely into the noise genre, so it was a surprise to find this collaboration with other finish artist Blutleuchtel treaded a more gothic cinematic and often creeplydialogue path. Mixing together horror film cinematics, pale and sinister jazz, metallic elements and damned world music vibes. Creepy found sound elements & noise elements appearing just here and there, but the focus is more of on atmospherics and not all out attacks.
As the title suggest this is a tribute to Modern Greek classical & electro-acoustic pioneer Iannis Xenakis, with berlin based composer and pianist Reinhold Friedl joined by the avant/noise chamber orchestra zeitkratzer.
From atop of this hill is an enduringly quirky, cosmic and original mix of prog, electronica and pop - offering up an eight track album that nears the hour mark that always remains fresh and varied through out.
Fish out of Water is a welcome reissue of one of the more effective Yes Solo albums from the mid seventies, this from the groups bass player and longest standing member. Here it’s given a deluxe expanded edition spread across two disks with the first disk featuring the orignal album and the secound disks a dvd.
You suffer finds Scottish Noise supre-mo Kylie Minoise doing their tribute/rethinking of the classic Napalm Death track, to celebrate 20 years anniversary of their debut album Scum.
This is Bonesfield's second release of harsh laser cutting electro noise meets elementally noise. Feeling something akin to if aliens attacked our planet and the environment chaos it would bring, i.e. hurricanes, land slides and burning /melting summers.
Asbestos Death were a late eighties pre-doom metal band, who sound a lot like they must've listened to a hell of a lot of Melvins and Sabbath records. They maybe have been exposed to Corrosion of Conformity, Saint Vitus or other punk/metal bands as well. Three quarters of this band would go on to form the ground breaking sludge-doom act Sleep.
Eugenio Maggio, a.k.a. Cría Cuervos, has gotten around quite a bit in the past few years, coordinating with artists such as Paul Bradley and Maurizio Bianchi, yet has remained under the radar. Vor Feuerschlünden (German for "Before Throats of Fire") consists of two long pieces over roughly 48 minutes. The label is calling this electro-acoustic and experimental music sourced from field recordings, self programmed theta waves, shortwave and software. In case you're wondering what the hell that sounds like, here we go;
The Latin of the title of Deathspell Omega's highly anticipated new release is taken from the Bible, Matthew 25:41, which says, "Go, you accursed ones, into the eternal fire". The turmoil that commences has indeed become an all-consuming vortex of progressive and technical black metal performed with an energy bordering on hysteria.
This has to be one of the strangest, bizarre, puzzling and often alarming records I’ve ever come across, really it’s a “trip” in true sense of the word, not really making any logical or musically sense for much of its playing time- a head melting experience of the highest order.